NHTSA Calls Out Autonomous Cars for Interfering With First Responders

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

The agency is giving autonomous vehicle makers until the end of July to figure out a solution:

The US Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is demanding action from autonomous car makers after identifying "a clear pattern of driverless AVs interfering with law enforcement and other first responders" over the past months. Jonathan Morrison, the agency's administrator, wrote a letter addressing the developers and issuing a call to action. Emergency situations are not rare or "edge cases," he wrote, so he wants AV developers and operators focus their resources on fixing the issue immediately.

While the NHTSA didn't give specific examples, there have been news about self-driving vehicles getting in the way of ambulances and fire trucks, like in the image above, for years. After a deadly shooting at a bar in Austin, Texas in March, a Waymo vehicle blocked an ambulance that was responding to the incident. While an officer was able to manually drive the Waymo robotaxi out of the way, it cost them a few minutes to resolve the problem.

According to Wired, emergency first responder leaders told regulators during a meeting in March that they were becoming frustrated at the behavior of autonomous vehicles on the streets. They said they've had to spend time during emergencies resolving problems with frozen or stuck cars. Officials from San Francisco and Austin, where Waymo's robotaxi service has been in operation for a while now, said the company's vehicles have been getting worse. They've apparently been seeing "backsliding" in the AVs' performance, with the vehicles now committing more traffic violations.

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